Sermon. Worcester College, Oxford. 5 November 2017
All Saints (transferred).
Isaiah 65.17-end
Hebrews 11.32-12.2
Do you have a favourite book title (just the title). I do, at least if we stay in the field of theology. It is this: What may we hope for, if hope we may? It’s by German theologian, Friedrich Marquardt. So it’s “Was duerfen wir hoffen, wenn wir hoffen duerften?”. German scholars will have noted - and here grammar pedants may have to close their ears - that it’s actually: “What may we hope for, if hope we might”. There is an extra degree of conditionality, of uncertainty. Now, I am not going to discuss the content of this work, for three reasons: (1) it is in German, (2) it’s three volumes long, and (3) I haven’t read them. If by the way, you thought you just now heard your chaplain mutter “that’s never stopped you before” you are probably right, and so is she. (We studied together some time ago.)
It’s the title itself that haunts me. What may we hope for, if hope we might? A strong case could be made for saying that this is the central theological question. We might say it is the human question. And let me add: it is a question which is always likely to be prominent in a university. Maybe not in the formal teaching, but still very much around, as you are promised so many glittering futures, sold with such force that it would be strange if there were not also anxieties about whether they can be realised.
What may we hope for, if hope we might? Isaiah, today, gives us the clearest answer possible. We, the readers, are to hope for the very best. A new heaven and a new earth, so brilliant that all that came before will be forgotten. “Jerusalem a rejoicing and her people a joy.” No premature death, but houses, vineyards, food for all. And not only peace between the nations, but even between formally hunting and hunted animals. This is good news indeed, This is the gospel according to Isaiah.
Did he mean it? Perhaps we need to take a step back, and reflect upon the message of Isaiah as a whole. I will leave for another place the question of how many Isaiahs there were. All commentators would agree that from chapter 40 on, the focus is on the exile of the elite of Judah to Babylon, and their hope of return to the Land of Promise, and Jerusalem in particular. True, the exile drifts out of focus from chapter 56 on. But this still means that at least a lot of the prophecy of Isaiah refers to events which can be dated.
Forgive me for quoting from Handel’s Messiah slightly out of season, but remember Isaiah says: “Every valley shall be exalted, and ever mountain and hill made low.” (Isa 40.4). In context, this isn’t a free-floating promise. It means that the desert country will be flattened out, so that a super highway can be built, and a highway not just anywhere, but taking people from Babylon to Jerusalem. It’s all about the return of the exiles.
Now, that journey, from Bablyon to Jerusalem did happen. The exiled did return, in history, around 539 CE. But it was not miraculous in the way Isaiah hoped. The Jews could return home, and indeed could rebuild their Temple. But they had to make all kinds of compromises with diverse greater powers, and they still knew suffering, pain, poverty, death and loss.
So we can - we must - say that the Hebrew Bible has an excess of hope. It has, in the prophets especially, a firm conviction that a time is coming when goodness will prevail. The People of Israel will flourish. And, as they are a small and insignificant people, if they flourish, it can only be because the wider world also knows the fulness of peace and justice. And/but that hope has to be projected into the future, which over time becomes the distant future, the final future, the end of the age, the messianic era. The Hebrew Bible does not really have a “job description” for the Messiah, but it does have hopes which are yet to be fulfilled, which become “messianic”.
What may we hope for, if hope we might? Following Isaiah, we hope for the very best. But we accept it may come in another age, unknown to us. We hope but we do not - let it be said - expect that superlative flourishing. As Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai taught: if you are planting a tree, and someone tells you Messiah has come, first plant your tree.
What we may hope for, if hope we might, then, in spite of Isaiah’s beautiful words, is in truth the courage to live in a world still not put right. Which takes us to the heroes of Hebrews, our second reading. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews is clear that Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephtha, David, Samuel, and many others lived courageously. Lived courageously in a world not put right. Indeed in a very wrong world, where there are fires and wars and tortures and persecutions, destitution, affliction and torments. For this writer, though, the world has now, now been put right in Christ. How so? Because Christ “is set down at the right hand of God”. So we have a Great High Priest in heaven, who can and does pray for us.
Gd shows Gdself utterly in solidarity with us. When we pray, it is not so much an effort on our part, as an entering into the prayer of Gd the Son to Gd the Father. Since we live in that intimacy, it must follow that the future is open, laden with hope. Gd is with us.
This vision from Hebrews is - you will have noticed - not quite the same as Isaiah’s. It is not so much that the world is put right, but that we can have a dramatically new form of courage, courage to tackle the problems which are still there, because Gd is on our side.
What may we hope for, if hope we might? Good things in the end, but maybe only courage for now? Can we live for that? I can’t tell you. But a great cloud of witnesses suggests yes. Hebrews has its heroes of holiness. You will have yours, those you know in reality, and those you know virtually. Hold on to these, these visions incarnate of human courage and divine solidarity. Saints, who know what it is to live in in-between times, where the world is still not put right, and who nevertheless get on with it.
Let me tell you of just one. Sister Eugenia. In her 60s she returned from Africa to her native Italy. In a pastoral drop-in she met a woman entangled in trafficking and prostitution, and so a culture utterly alien to the religious sister’s world. She knew nothing. She was ageing, and so was her order. But she felt herself converted by this woman and her plea. Now she runs networks of women between Europe and Africa to disrupt the trafficking. Her motto (I warn you, it contradicts management-speak): we need to look to our poverties, find others who also feel inadequate to the task and get on with it. “We combine our poverties and so they become riches.” Most saints, most of the time, thought what they were doing was “just getting on with it”.
Somebody one asked: What is the difference between a good person and a holy person? In the presence of a good person, the rest of us feel worse about ourselves. In the presence of a holy person, the rest of us feel better about ourselves. Holiness is not repeatable. You can be holy only in the way you are called to be holy. But holiness is always contagious, encouraging, warm, and for you. What may we hope for, it hope we might? Quite simply, to be a saint among saints.
Amen.
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